by Jenn Stark
“And it’s—what? Something bad? Graffiti?”
“Not graffiti. It’s stylized art, pretty well done, it looks like, though I’m no judge of that kind of thing.”
“Okay…” I still wasn’t getting it. Nikki pulled into the warehouse parking lot, and I noticed three different cameras trained on the space, for all that it was empty. Soo had never fenced off the space because it was one of four dozen other buildings and lots—no one was likely to insist on setting up camp here versus fifteen feet down the road. “But worst case scenario, it’s just paint. What’s the big deal?”
If anything, Brody looked even wearier. “You can see for yourself.”
Nikki parked the limo, and we all exited it, the heat of the day shrink-wrapping itself to us until we moved into the shadow of the building. The chain-link gate was open, the lock disengaged.
“Ma-Singh’s already here,” I supplied, and Nikki nodded, stepping past the barrier. A narrow walkway led between some utility boxes and the warehouse, and then the space opened up again, to a smaller parking area of maybe six spaces—enough for us to step back and look up at the building.
My third eye shot open, the pain so immediate, so unexpected, I staggered back.
“Right here, dollface. I got you.”
“What is it?” Brody demanded over her. In the distance, I could sense more than see another large figure striding toward us. Ma-Singh. Had to be Ma-Singh.
But I couldn’t see anything but the image spray-painted on the wall.
It was…gorgeous. The detail mind-blowing, especially when it had to have been done with half a million cans of spray paint. More importantly, it was an image I’d seen before: a woman striding forth with a swinging scales of justice grasped in one hand, a sword in the other. If she’d been complacently sitting on her throne, everything still and serene, she would be a dead-on depiction of the Tarot card Justice.
But she wasn’t sitting, and she wasn’t serene. She looked about to break into a run, her crown tilted forward and her long judicial robes of red and gold flapping in the wind, her long dark hair flowing out behind her. She was slightly turned, as if looking over our shoulders, and her face was fierce enough to believe she was single-handedly about to go out and wreak havoc on the world.
She also looked dead-on like me.
“Sara?” Brody prompted.
“It’s not me. But I’ve seen this before,” I said slowly, all three of my eyes still wide and staring at the picture. “Not here, though. Not anywhere near here.” I turned to him. “Who found this?”
“Surveillance company in the area noticed more activity than normal, though nobody reported any issues.” Brody scratched his neck. “They sent a scout out anyway and talked to some kids who sent them here. It’s become something of a mecca for graffiti artists in the past twenty-four hours, from what we’ve gathered. No one knows how it got here. No one knows who did it.”
“How’d it stay clean?” Nikki asked. “If other artists have been here—they’d have added to it.”
“I thought so too. But try to touch it.” Brody motioned her toward the building.
Nikki shot him a look, but Ma-Singh held her back when she began to move. Instead, the general stepped forward and reached out his hand. It stopped about three inches from the surface of the wall. Ma-Singh jerked his hand back as an arc of electricity skittered out in a radial pattern.
“Force field,” the general said.
Nikki picked up a rock, chucked it. No electrical jolt this time, but the rock bounced away, dropping harmlessly.
“What the hell,” I muttered.
“You said that’s not you?” Brody asked, pivoting toward me. “Because it sure as hell looks like it. Dressed up as Justice.”
“Not Justice,” I shook my head. “I saw this image on a wall in a blasted-out temple. The likeness to me is pretty good, I’ll grant you. But that isn’t Justice. Best I can come up with is the name Vigilance, but I don’t know much about that icon. It’s not standard in any decks I know. And no, I don’t know why it looks so much like me, before you ask, again. I’d say it was a coincidence.”
“It’s not a coincidence,” Nikki scoffed. “Not with it hanging here big as life on a House of Swords building.”
I turned to Ma-Singh. “You didn’t have any reports of this? No surveillance blips?”
“None,” The general glowered. “I called the police when I first saw it, not realizing the extent of the image. The surveillance company assigned to this sector contacted us last night, and we checked our feeds, but there was nothing until yesterday morning, when the kids started showing up.”
“So it popped up two nights ago and immediately had a fan club.” Nikki tossed her hair over her shoulder. “How’d anyone know to look for it?”
Brody filled in. “According to the locals, people saw the electrical show, got curious, checked it out. The artist was nowhere to be found once they got here. Graffiti wars are a thing out here with the abandoned warehouses. But this—they swear none of them did this, and I’m inclined to believe them.” He gestured to the wall. “If they had skills like this, they’d be in high demand on the Strip.”
I walked forward, ignoring Ma-Singh’s rumbled protest.
“I’m not going to touch it,” I assured him, but I lifted my hand anyway. The energy of the electrical field cracked and hissed beneath my palm. “We have anyone in the House with this level of artistic and engineering skills?” I asked over my shoulder.
Ma-Singh didn’t hesitate. “We do not.”
“Council?” Nikki supplied. “Hanged Man’s in town, you know. Electricity is right up his alley.”
“Maybe. Certainly the only viable explanation I can come up with,” I said.
“But Tesla didn’t see that image. Nobody saw that image, except for me. There’s too much detail for it to be anything but an exact replica.” I scowled, thinking hard. The temple where I’d seen Vigilance had been in Atlantis, or what was left of it. The Hierophant was the only Council member who’d been alive when that mystical city was still standing, but this didn’t feel like his MO.
“Gotta be some kind of message, though, right?” Brody asked. “A prompt? Call to arms?”
Something about that resonated with me, in all the wrong kind of ways. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s you, Sara.” Brody emphatically waved his hands at the painting. “It’s clearly you. It’s on your warehouse. Heavily protected so that no one’ll touch it before you get the message. And it’s a picture of you on the warpath.”
“With a sword,” Ma-Singh put in, not at all helpfully.
“That’s not me,” I said. I didn’t know why, but I was sure of this—as sure as anything I’d ever been. “It’s…”
My third eye cramped so hard, I slapped my hand to my brow, flinching away from the wall. In my flailing, my left hand arced out, raking through the force field.
All hell broke loose.
An electrical explosion burst up and away from the wall. An enormous scatter of sparks and fire threw us all to the ground. I cracked my head hard on the pavement. Lights flashed in front of my eyes, images cascading one upon the other. The hurtling trip through space and time to return to the lost city, the broken dome in the center of Atlantis, the scattered weapons I’d pulled together to bring back to this time and place. And then there’d been this image, this glorious image, stretching up on the wall above, beckoning me to see and understand. But I hadn’t seen—I hadn’t understood.
There’d been more nudges too, some subtle, some not. A voice in the desert wilderness when an enemy had tried hacking me up in her bid to take ownership of the House of Swords, the cryptic comments from the Hermit, speaking of times gone by without telling me a damned thing. The sense I’d had in Memphis when I’d stood on the wasteland that had been my former home…the sense of sorrow, guilt. Now this. How could it not be a message?
But a message from…?
A chill wind shuddered thro
ugh me, harsh and forlorn. It’s touch seemed to freeze the marrow of my bones. I felt…lost. So unbearably lost…
“Sara—Sara!” Brody screamed into my face, his breath a wash of exhaustion and coffee. I opened my eyes, and he cursed a blue streak, yanking me up and away from an equally hovering Ma-Singh.
“Oh, for the love of—let me go,” I said, and they both stiffened at the tone of my voice, then cleared back and allowed me to stand.
“It’s gone now,” Nikki called. She stood by the painting, peering at it. “The force field. Message has apparently been received, right?”
We turned and stared up at the building. The image was still there, brilliant in the sunshine, gorgeous and powerful and full. And for the first time, finally, I knew who it was of. Not me at all.
But incredibly—impossibly—my mother.
Even as I thought it, reality rekindled in my brain. No. Not my mother. That wasn’t possible.
Instead, this had to be some sort of mind freak. Someone who knew just enough about me to know exactly what screws to turn. The Emperor, Viktor Dal, fit that ticket. Tesla, the Hanged Man and newest member of the Council to return to the Strip, loved nothing more than creating electrical light shows. The two of them were playing some game at my expense, and the mere thought of that attempted manipulation made me seethe. What was it that Armaeus had said? The Council wasn’t yet at full speed? Well, he needed to get the rest of the players in place and pronto, because these little jabs needed to stop.
“We’re done here,” I said. I shot a look at Ma-Singh. “Get the security team on it, check the entire area, make sure there aren’t any more surprises. Get a camera back here too. I want to know who else comes and goes, whether it’s painters or whoever. Who comes, who stays, who does what and why.”
“Who did this?” Brody asked gruffly.
“My money’s on the Council,” I said, twisting my lips. “Probably our old pal the Emperor, maybe with the help of one or more folks who actually saw the original version of this painting.” I jabbed my thumb at the wall. “Viktor’s got six guys in his employ who are likely candidates. The Hierophant could have also given him the details he needed.”
“I don’t know, dollface.”
I held up a hand to stay Nikki’s objection. “I don’t fault any of them. They may not have even known what Viktor was up to, and this is pretty harmless, as pranks go. They’re just screwing with me. I don’t know why, but they are.”
“Maybe,” Nikki said, peering up. “It sure is pretty, though.”
“Yeah.” I joined her gaze, taking in the full power of the Vigilance image. The woman in that picture could probably have ruled the universe if she wanted to. And, while she looked like me, did that really mean anything? When I’d first visited Atlantis, I’d seen a representation of Vigilance on my palm. I’d later witnessed a more complete version of that same figure painted on the great central dome of the city—not while I was in Atlantis, but later, during a vision I’d received when I’d been playing footsie with Hell. But though the image bore a resemblance to me, the face of Vigilance might have been crafted with magic, to reflect the viewer’s face no matter who looked upon it. It had been created in Atlantis, after all.
Either way, this prank had Viktor Dal written all over it. If the Emperor was ready to stage some war against me, it was fine by me. We had a lot of unfinished business between us. And with three eyes now on the job, I’d definitely see him coming.
Chapter Eighteen
We left an unhappy Ma-Singh behind to manage the mess at the warehouse, and walked back to our car. Since Better Health Services had already been cased by the cops earlier this week and I was driving with two trained police officers, there wasn’t much the general could complain about. Not that he didn’t try.
A crowd of kids and granola-looking adults had gathered on the street opposite the building, clearly here to pay homage to the graffiti decorating the warehouse wall. I ducked into the limo before any of them could recognize my resemblance to the image, but continued to peer through the tinted windows at the group.
They were all sizes and more ages than I would have expected, from school-age kids to twenty-somethings, to even a few older men and women, their faces burned brown by decades in the sun. As Nikki threw the car into gear and pulled away from the curb, however, one of them caught me—for just a moment. A boy who looked…familiar, somehow. I caught just a glimpse of his face, then he was gone and we were accelerating, the ragtag group dwindling behind us.
“Make sure Ma-Singh talks to today’s group of admirers,” I said to Nikki. “Maybe something new will shake out, if it’s not a cop asking the questions.”
“Right, because he’s a lot less imposing,” Brody said dryly. Still, he seemed more energized than he had before, and he put the commute to good use, bringing us up to speed on the latest developments of the case. Which, sadly, turned out to be a short conversation, since not much new had been discovered.
“Okay. No one has seen the Deguanzo mother for two days now, ditto Deguanzo junior, ditto the mom’s first son,” Nikki said. “She’s not with friends, relatives, her job, neighbors, other patients at the clinic.”
“Exactly.” Brody rubbed his hands over his face again, as if he could massage eight hours of sleep back into his eyes. Once again, I wondered about his aura—or whatever the haze of gunk was I’d seen when I’d looked at him with my third eye. As I watched him, I let that same Sight take over once more—but whatever I’d seen was gone now.
No, not quite gone, I realized. The murk still clung to him, not quite out of sight, dim enough that I might miss it if I wasn’t looking closely enough. So—maybe he was simply tired. Or maybe my own vision was suspect when it came to someone I’d known for so long.
Or, maybe there was something more going on with the good detective. Something I’d need to figure out after we discovered what was happening to the local Connecteds.
As if on cue, Brody’s next words refocused me on the crisis at hand. “The facility has been completely cooperative. It doesn’t look like it was an operation that went up to the top—just sideways through the organization. Some midlevel doctor or administrative person who culled the herd. Now that we’ve started looking into it, we’ve uncovered a half-dozen other missing persons cases with potential ties to the facility over the past three months. That, we’re keeping very much on the down low, so as not to spook the place. They’re back to business as usual already. We’re just watching them more closely. None of the other MP cases involve kids, though.”
“So why her?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Mrs. Deguanzo never used her married name, didn’t want her husband to find out, and since she presented herself as an undocumented worker but who still had cash…”
“Easy pickings,” Nikki nodded. “Not a bad way to conduct a sting operation too, that undocumented angle. Now more than ever, everyone’s keeping their head down.”
“We’re already doing that to go at the drug trade—the normal drug trade,” Brody said. “But that’s why these MPs went unreported. Friends and colleagues who knew these people were missing were probably at risk themselves, and nobody could afford to get found by the wrong people.”
“What do you have on the other victims?” I asked.
“Adults, like I said, all of them. In the clinic for anxiety meds for the most part. That’s the only apparent connection. Aged twenty-four to thirty-six, healthy in the main, single, no children that they admitted to in their preliminary paperwork. All of them paid in cash.”
“All undocumented?”
“No, two of the three were native-born, but they were living transient lives. No one was expecting them anywhere except their jobs, but they were day worker positions. There’s always another person standing in line to take a job like that.”
I nodded. Vegas wasn’t that much different from any large city. There were always those who fell through the cracks. Normally, the bodies showed up, eventually. These
hadn’t.
“Who on the staff is our likeliest bet?”
Brody shook his head. “They’re all clean, from what we can tell so far. Staff isn’t large, and most of them have been together a long time. We’ve moved on to suppliers, someone walking through, striking up a conversation.”
“Like that won’t take fifty years to sift through,” Nikki groaned. She pulled into a parking lot, the neat sign advertising Better Health Services tucked discreetly into a rock-and-cactus planter. The building itself looked unthreatening, and the lot was half full of cars.
“I don’t think we need to sift through anything,” I said, staring at the building. A miasma of foul colors swirled over it. “The person we want is still inside. Keep going.” Obligingly, Nikki exited at the far side of the parking lot, then drove to the next strip mall opening another thirty feet down.
Brody sighed irritably. “I’m not saying you don’t have skills, Sara, but we’ve already been through the staff. If someone’s guilty, we can’t prove it by normal means. And if we can’t prove it, we can’t get anywhere.”
“You can’t.” I nodded toward Nikki. “But all she needs is one or two good memories to guide us. We do this right, they’ll never know they’ve been made. We get a bead on where they took the victims, and we’re out of there. We can worry about arrests later.”
Brody considered that, his mouth thinning in concentration, but Nikki and I were already getting out of the car. “I don’t like it,” he said.
“Of course you don’t. Okay, who’s going to be our guinea pig?” Nikki looked at me, then Brody. “You been on site here, love chop?”
“No,” Brody said. “Another officer caught this case, before we were clued into the potential Connected, um, connection.”
“So they don’t know you.” When he shook his head, she grinned. “And you’re hot and sort of pitiful looking right now. That’ll help if our pointer is a chick. Can you act drunk, disabled, that sort of thing? We need a reason for both of us to be with you.”